Thursday, 14 February 2013

How Disney has influenced animation for many years
after they started.

Disney
was one of the first major animation companies founded by Walt and Roy Disney.
By starting out with a simple black and white animation with no sound to 3D
animation with synchronized voices and music, Disney has changed the whole
course of animation in the film industry. Starting out as Laugh-O-Gram
productions, Disney has evolved and come a large way in the business view as
they started off as a company only creating to now be a company that owns other
multiple companies like Miramax, Marvel, Touchstone and many more. This is just
one example of how large Disney has become and how it has impacted on the world
of media.

The first noted animation with sound, which
was also the debut of loveable children’s character Mickey Mouse, was the short
film in 1928 “Steamboat Willie”. This had a massive impact on the animation
industry as it was something new that nobody had seen before and gave more of a
story to the animated films made after. This however made Sullivan and
Messmer’s “Felix the Cat” look out dated causing them to move, unwillingly,
into sound production.

The first animation with colour was a
series, “Silly Symphony”, made up of shorts that debuted with the short called
“Flowers and Trees”. This opened up a new revolution in animated films by using
Technicolor as it was around this time where more and more people would go to
the cinema to specifically watch the short animation at the start of the
feature film being played.After
the invention of colour in animation, black and white films like Laurel and
Hardy, Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” were re-released with added colour into
the films using the same technique.

Disney is also responsible or creating the
first ever animated full-length feature film that was the 1937 film “Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs”. This was the start of a completely new type of film that
had then opened up a new world of film and cinema.

Disney has influenced many different
companies in the animation industry, from Pixar Studio’s to Studio Ghibli. As
Disney was one of the first animation companies they had created techniques,
which had been used in many animations years after. An example of this is the
same cel technique of the characters for hand drawn animation against a
background that they had used in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. 31 years
later the film “The Beatles Yellow Submarine” used the same style and technique
to capture the imagination and fantasy of the music and story of the Yellow
Submarine and Sgt. Peppers lonely Hearts Club.

Another
company that was running at the same time as Disney was the well known company
Warner Brothers. The creator of the hit animated show Looney Tunes, Warner
Brothers had been influenced and followed the same pattern as Disney for
example creating characters that are iconic and well known like Daffy Duck,
Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and many more. However the famous characters of the
Looney Tunes group have stayed in the 2D animation whereas Disney have now
moved on to their first 3D animated film, after the great success from Disney’s
company Pixar, in 2005 with the film “Chicken Little”. With high hopes for
“Chicken Little” from knowing the success that animation studio DreamWorks had
gained with 3D animated films like “Shrek” and “Shark Tale” their dreams were
fallen when the film did not make such an impact as thought. It was only in
2010 when Disney tried again with the film “Tangled” which had a larger hit on
the film box office.

By being partner companies with a smaller
company, films have started to merge together. An example of this is Studio
Ghibli’s character Totoro from the 1988 film “My Neighbor Totoro” was featured
in the Disney Pixar film “Toy Story 3”. This shows how animation companies are
starting to work together and using each other’s animation technique.

Aardman studios use claymation, which is stop motion animation that is made out of

clay. To which there are many different job roles that are involved. A few of the jobs

that are involved are Director and Producer, Art Directors, Animators, Editors, Model

Makers, Sculptors, Painters and many more.

Job Roles

Director: The director is in charge and looks over every

department within the process of making the film.

However, with some films like ‘Wallace and Gromit in

the Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ there are two directors

who are Nick Park and Steve Box. Both directors would

have put their minds together to come up with ideas and

work as partners to produce the finished product. For

example, they would talk about shot’s that they want

within the film and then they would work on that shot

together and expand their ideas to achieve the shot, as they both would want.

Producer: A Producer is the person who would put money into the film and

sometimes help by inputting their ideas into the film. For example, the producer on

the Aardman TV series, Julie Lockhart, would have helped put money towards what

she felt needed the money. If she had thought that the show needed more

advertisement she would talk to the filmmakers and come to an agreement with them

to put money and her own ideas to get the advertising in production.

Art Director: The art director of Aardman would be the person in charge of things

like the set design and the model makers. Looking over, keeping a watch and

organizing groups like the painters, model makers, sculptures, set designers and more

the art director has a large reasonability as they need to get the production of arts

ready on time for filming.

Animator: An animator is a person who shoots each frame of the animated film. The animator for Wallace and Gromit the curse of the were-rabbit, Will Becher will have to film and take shots of every frame of the film so when they are put together and played through it is as if it's one continuos shot.

Editor: An editor of a film is in charge of putting all the of the footage together to produce a final film. The editors, in Aardmans case David McCormick, will look at each frame and of and place them together in the correct order to make up the final cut of the movie.

David Frost interviews Richard Nixon
because it is about a well known subject that Frost goes into detail with his
questions that he gets answer for the public which would not be known if he
didn’t ask them questions.

In which
interview was the funniest response and the question that prompted it?

Interview
with the band Murdrdolls by Kerrang where drummer/guitarist Joey Jordison walks
out in response to the question “as you’re fans of everything horror, are you looking
forward to the new twilight movie?”

Which interview
gave the most emotional response?

The
interview that was the most emotional was an interview with Sid Wilson, DJ of
the band Slipknot, where he talks about the intro track and what it was. He talks
about how it was just after his grandfather died, at the end of recording the
album and how he went into the studio and made a hard hitting 59 second intro
track.

What was your
least favorite interview and why?

The
interview I disliked the most was one with Jeremy Paxman and Dizzee Rascal. I
did not like this, as interviewee Dizzee Rascal had not done any research on
the subject matter before the interview. His questions were not open answers
and he was not sure on what to say so he tried to promote his music of hip-hop
rather than talk about politics.

What was the
best interview question and why?

The best question I listened to was during
the Frost/Nixon interview where David Frost proposed the question about Richard
Nixon saying something to the public about everything that he had put the people
of America through. I like this, as the answer he got was a question from
Richard Nixon asking what Frost would like to hear him say. This allowed David
frost to say things that he personally thought and was not written down on a
card.

Which was the
worst question in an interview and why?

The
worst question in an interview was one during the Jeremy Paxman and Dizzee
Rascal interview and was “Do you believe in political parties in Britain?” I
feel that this is a bad question, as it does not open up for an answer, to
which Rascal simply replied, “Yes, I do believe in them”.

Who is your
favorite interviewer and why?

David frost is my favorite interviewer as
he asks personal questions which get detailed answers and gets to know what the
viewer wants to know.

conquering the west face of Siula Grande with interviews of the climbers talking

about the events that have happened and deadly risks they had to face.

Essayistic

With a very simple structure, the
essayistic genre is a documentary that is set out like an essay as if someone
is explaining rather than showing the audience. Formed from personal events and
opinions on a chosen subject the documentary, however still including the facts
f the matter, is there more to educate rather for the sake of filming. An
example of this style of genre is the Channel4 TV series ‘The Story Of Film: An
Odyssey ’. This shows director Mark Cousins going through the history of film
with facts, and his own opinions on the matter and personal events that have
happened to him.

Thursday, 7 February 2013

WWW: I liked using clay as I could mould it
into anything I wanted and easily create things which I could not using other
mediums. i.e. a turtle in clay is easier than making a turtle out of Lego.

EBI: The only EBI I would say is that it is
time consuming, as you have to make the characters, props, and settings whereas
other mediums you can have them pre-made.

Lego:WWW: I liked the fact that, unlike the claymation, it was not time consuming. this was due to the fact that the objects and the people were already made. I do enjoy the image in this animation and how it looks if it was as smooth as any other animation.EBI: The faults I have found with this is that it is much harder to control and move the characters which makes the film look jumpy, and although they are made for you, if you wanted a character to look a specific way, it will be hard to.